Crazy news, everyone. An agent has read my novel, Gay Marine Blues, and offered me notes and encouragement. I haven’t gotten the offer of representation yet, so I don’t want to celebrate too much or tell you anything too concrete about this… but… I’m excited. If I can get the thing into good shape, we might be trying to sell it soon.

And so, as I’ve prepared to dive into the manuscript for another round of revisions, I’ve returned to an old experiment: Hell Week. Readers of the blog will know that Hell Week is a series of days where I gorge myself with military novels and memoirs—the more boneheaded the better. Why?

To remind myself of the fine details of military life I may have forgotten; to get ideas for how to describe incidents and equipment civilians may not understand; and of course, to see how other writers went wrong, and to avoid their mistakes.

There have been two late installments in my Hell Week digest. Heller’s Catch-22, and B.H. Norton’s Force Recon Diary 1969. One is a timeless classic that explores the fundamental absurdity of war; the other is Catch 22.

It’s one of those books that people know are funny, or great, or zany, but the caliber of Catch 22’s humor and style is something you won’t understand until you pick it up. I mean, you might know it’s funny, but people probably haven’t shown you how it explodes English idiom. The scene of Clevinger’s trial is a great example.

The case against Clevinger was open and shut. The only thing missing was something to charge him with.

“Yes, sir,” [Clevinger said,] “I said that I didn’t say you couldn’t punish me.”

“Just what the hell are you talking about?”

“I’m answering your question, sir.”

“What question?”

“’Just what the hell do you mean, you bastard, when you said we couldn’t punish you?’” said the corporal who could take shorthand, reading from his steno pad.

“All right,” said the colonel, “just what the hell did you mean?”

“I didn’t say that you couldn’t punish me, sir.”

“When?” asked the colonel.

“When what, sir?”

“Now you’re asking me questions again.”

“I’m sorry, sir. I’m afraid I don’t understand your question.”

“When didn’t you say we couldn’t punish you? Don’t you understand my question?”

“No, sir. I don’t understand.”

“You’ve just told us that. Now suppose you answer my question.”

“But how can I answer it?”

“That’s another question you’re asking me.”

“I’m sorry, sir. But I don’t know how to answer it. I never said you couldn’t punish me.”

“Now you’re telling us when you did say it. I’m asking you to tell us when you didn’t say it.”

Clevinger took a deep breath. “I always didn’t say you couldn’t punish me, sir.”

“That’s much better, Mr. Clevinger, even though it is a barefaced lie.”

I love so much that sentence: “I always didn’t say you couldn’t punish me, sir.”

It’s not just that Catch 22 is funny, or absurd, or a poignant depiction of what war does to people. More than that, the novel plays with language in a way I don’t think I’ve ever seen before or since. Heller has created a world where crime, waste, abuse, and failure are all part of the plan, rather than accidents, and this is reflected in the language the characters use. It really is an achievement, even though it is an unwieldy novel, and getting through the middle of it can be a slog, humor notwithstanding. Norman Mailer famously said: “You could have cut a hundred pages out of that book, and no one would have noticed, not even the author.”

This is pretty true, and yet, I could apply that same criticism to Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead. I also think Mailer might have been speaking out of his wounded pride, as it seems to me that the overwrought style of The Naked and the Dead might have served as inspiration for Heller’s extra-overwrought style in Catch 22. Mailer might have thought, as he read Catch 22, that Heller was making fun of him.

When I sat down to write this blog post, I planned to say something about Force Recon Diary 1969. I come to the end of the post having said nothing. I don’t think anyone is worse off for that. But, for the sake of aesthetic resolution, I’ll say a few words about why I abandoned it.

B.H. Norton’s Force Recon Diary 1969 isn’t a terrible book. If you’re interested in the inventory, organization, and minutiae of a Force Recon company, and want a look behind the scenes, you’ll be delighted with Norton’s book. But there’s not a great narrative running through it. Much of the book is surprisingly slow. Skipping ahead to the epilogue, I read a lot of words like “Leadership,” and “Commitment—” you will not find much subversive material in this memoir, which is really what I’m after.

The writing style is also poor. Here are two quick examples: “Unflyable, the crew had decided to bail out but had forgotten to mention their departure to the seven of us occupying space in the rear of the smoking CH-46.” Unflyable is a grotesque hanging modifier. Per Elements of Style, your participial phrases, nouns, adjectives, and adjective phrases at the beginning of the sentence should refer to the grammatical subject. In this sentence, Unflyable seems to refer to the crew, not to the helicopter. It’s just poor style. I blame Norton’s editor.

Here’s the second, which boasts some very funny comma usage: “I had, unknowingly complied with Major Lee’s order to lose ten pounds, as upon returning from my first reconnaissance mission on the DMZ, I found myself twelve pounds lighter than when I had left.”

It seems like he couldn’t decide whether unknowingly was a restrictive or nonrestrictive phrase and decided to split the difference. Or perhaps he thought unknowingly complied with Major Lee’s order to lose ten pounds was a nonrestrictive phrase, which makes even less sense. If the phrase was omitted, the sentence would be very funny: “I had, I found myself twelve pounds lighter than when I had left.” Again, I blame the editor. But if you want to write books, I think you owe it to your readers to learn how to use a comma.